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Peace Operations

After a more than a decade of continuous expansion, historic levels of demand and increasing operational complexity pose risks to the viability of peace operations. Setbacks in high-profile missions have coincided with military overstretch and growing fiscal austerity, while missions that have achieved interim stability lack a clear transition strategy towards sustainable peacebuilding and development. At the same time, the evolving use of a range of alternative models of peace operations, including the hugely expanded use of special political missions, is both creating new options and adding complexity to policy debates. At the UN and elsewhere, new questions about the relative merits of traditional peacekeeping versus lighter options create an ongoing demand for policy-relevant research. CIC aims to provide analysis on these issues and to improve conceptual and operational linkages across political missions, peacekeeping operations, and peacebuilding.

Related Publications

In the last decade, there have been two trends in mission mandates. The first and most obvious is the United Nations Security Council authorization of peacekeeping missions with significant military components and complex, multidimensional mandates. Yet, due to global strains on personnel, equipment, financial resources, and to competing international priorities, these missions – typically in the most challenging environments – have suffered from under-deployment and insufficient political attention.

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Past Events

Paige Arthur, CIC Deputy Director, was a member of a distinguished panel of peacebuilding practitioners for the Initiative for Peacebuilding through Education’s 2017-18 academic year kickoff event, “Has Peacebuilding Failed? The Shift to Sustaining Peace”. The event was held at the NYU SPS Center for Global Affairs on September 15, 2017.

The people of South Sudan is suffering under a terrible man-made catastrophe where millions have fled from their homes and many face starvation. Ending the three-year-old civil war is the first step to solve the crisis, but negotiations, led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), have faltered.